Building advanced machines requires exceptional engineers. But look inside the organizations creating the most sophisticated hardware today, and you'll find they've mastered something beyond technical brilliance: deep understanding of the humans behind the controls.
This insight changes everything about how engineering teams operate. Technical problems become human problems. Specifications become conversations. And progress emerges not just from solving hard technical challenges, but from solving the right ones—the ones that actually matter to the people using these machines.
This approach transforms organizations from the inside out. It shapes how engineers think, how teams collaborate, and how products evolve. At Sift, this manifests in five key principles:
- Customer experience first, literally standing in the clients' shoes
- Bias for action, favoring rapid iteration over perfect execution
- Own the outcome, ensuring solutions deliver impact from concept to success
- Maintain long-term mindset building for decades, not quarters
- Thrive together, knowing that collective wisdom surpasses individual brilliance
When technical excellence meets these foundational principles, breakthroughs become inevitable. A natural side effect: the approach attracts engineers who are drawn to Sift to solve hardware's hardest problems. They come not just to build modern machines, but to fundamentally rethink how they're built.
We don't just serve our customers; we stand in their shoes
Customer Experience First
We don't just serve our customers; we stand in their shoes. Every decision, every innovation springs from a deep understanding of their challenges and aspirations. This isn't just rhetoric—it's our fundamental approach.
Early on, we took this literally by embedding ourselves with Parallel Systems. We rented office space alongside their team, working day-to-day in their environment. Our engineers worked directly with technicians, gaining firsthand insights into the real-world challenges our product needed to address.
This early lesson in proximity's value drove the choice of El Segundo as home base—positioning engineering teams at the heart of Southern California's aerospace and robotics ecosystem. Physical co-location may not scale to every customer, but the principle remains: the best solutions emerge from direct engagement with the engineers building next-generation machines. That's why our Forward Deployment Engineers (FDE) embed deeply with each customer's team, bringing hands-on experience from SpaceX and other mission-critical environments to help solve complex engineering challenges.
Bias for Action
Swift action, quick learning, and progress over perfection drive results. The famous Monty Hall game show problem illustrates this perfectly: Imagine choosing one of three doors, knowing a prize lies behind just one. The host, who knows where the prize is, opens a different door to reveal it's empty. Should you stick with your original choice or switch to the remaining door?
Most people instinctively stick with their first choice. But mathematically, switching doubles your chances of winning—from 33% to 66%. Even when this feels wrong, even when it feels too late to change course, acting on new information beats standing still.
A “build, test, learn, repeat” cycle applies this same principle. Each iteration reveals new information that makes the next decision clearer. This proactive approach prevents analysis paralysis and transforms each step into progress. The key isn't being right the first time—it's being ready to act decisively when new insights emerge.
Embrace Learning
We wear our mistakes like badges of honor, each one a hard-earned lesson on the path to breakthroughs. This mindset reduces the risk of dwelling on setbacks and allows for quick pivots—crucial in an industry where mistakes can have serious consequences.
By embracing a culture of learning, we ensure that even our missteps drive us forward. Each challenge becomes an opportunity to refine our approach and strengthen our solutions.
We're not building for the next quarter; we're building for the next quarter-century.
Maintain a Long-Term Mindset
We're not building for the next quarter; we're building for the next quarter-century. Our eyes are on the horizon, even as our hands work tirelessly in the present. This long-term perspective guides every decision we make, from product development to customer relationships.
This creates a purposeful tension with our bias for action. While we move quickly and iterate constantly, we never lose sight of the horizon. Each rapid decision happens within the context of long-term impact. It's this balance—between swift action and patient vision—that drives truly transformative results.
Avoid the trap of investing too much in perfecting a single version only to realize there's a fundamental flaw. Instead, learn from each iteration and make improvements that align with our long-term goal to further human exploration by modernizing how machines are built and operated. The most powerful outcomes emerge when we hold both truths: act decisively today while building for tomorrow.
Thrive Together
None of us is as smart as all of us. Leverage the alchemy of diverse minds coming together, turning the base metal of individual ideas into the gold of collective innovation. This collaborative spirit extends beyond our team to include our customers and partners. By fostering a low ego environment with a high surface area for collaboration, we create a space where innovation thrives and complex challenges find elegant solutions.
In the fast-paced world of space technology, success comes to those who can iterate quickly, learn continuously, and truly understand their customers' needs. At Sift, we're not just building products—we're shaping the future of space technology, one iteration at a time.
Own the Impact
Real value isn't measured in deployments or features—it's measured in outcomes. In hardware engineering, where small decisions can have massive consequences, this means taking responsibility for the entire journey from concept to proven success. It's not enough to build something and hand it off; we need to see it work in the real world, delivering the results our customers need.
This mindset shapes everything we do. When we deploy a new feature, we work alongside engineering teams to verify it performs as intended. When we optimize a data pipeline, we measure success not in processing speed, but in faster engineering decisions. When we spot potential improvements, we don't just suggest them—we drive them through to completion. Because in mission-critical engineering, anything less than complete ownership of outcomes isn't really ownership at all.
